Shelf watch: Zombiestrike moves in, and Rapidstrikes finally arrive

Here's another shelf watch which was delayed in posting. This isn't the one from somewhere nowhere near Florida that Toruk promised, but it is from nowhere near Florida: Toronto and a place near the border of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, to be specific.

First, most of the stuff on the shelves at the Toronto Downsview center when I dropped by on the 19th was the same as before, but with a few notable exceptions.

The usual stock of Retaliators was gone, and in its place sat a stack of XD Retaliators. There were no other white XD blasters. (I'm not a fan of the new colour scheme - it just doesn't look as good to my eyes, and white gets dirty easily.)

Several Slingfires were present, even though this blaster has been consistently listed as out of stock online and not sold in stores for months on Walmart.ca. I've seen the opposite in the past; to make a long story short, Wallmart's customer service is sometimes great and sometimes terrible. The most reliable way to get a blaster that a store sometimes stocks is to visit that store frequently to see when they have it.

Speaking of zombiestrike blasters, Crossfires and Doublestrikes showed up.

This is kinda funny:

A rollback . . . a week before Christmas? Wallmart, are you drunk?

This is, believe it or not, the first time that I've seen Rapidstrikes on a shelf, and the third time that I've seen them in person (not counting a slightly earlier visit to this store, when I didn't bring a camera). This blaster was released over a year ago. International (i.e. everywhere except America) Nerf distribution is, shall we say, less than perfect.









Wild Tiger - if I remember the name correctly - is a chain of small stores which sell cheap clotes, food, and toys. I was a little surprised to see Nerf on the shelves of one near the border of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia: old blue coulour-scheme Roughcuts, Crossfires, Ripshots, a single Pink Crush, Hailfire upgrade kits, and a single old colour-scheme Vigilon - overall, a surprising variety for such a small store.

My guess is that they were selling NOS that came in quantities too small for larger stores to bother putting on a shelf. In any case, this, along with the aforementioned Slingfire misadventures, illustrates a point: there is no substitute for trawling a variety of stores.